The €6m demonstration project is funded by the European Union and Turkish government.
Dan Rutherford is the aviation director of the International Council on Clean Transportation.
In 2011, a plane flew from Houston to Chicago powered by fuel which was 40% algae-based and 60% petroleum.
Aviation is a notoriously difficult sector to clean up.
It is still cheaper than sustainable alternatives, which a McKinsey analysis in 2020 costed at $1,300-3,800/t, depending on the production method.
Berat Haznedaroglu, director of the Istanbul project, told Climate Home he was aiming to get the price down to $1,000/t for algae-derived fuel.
“There will be a mandate coming from IATA and the governments,” he said, adding that the increased cost of using clean fuels would be passed on to passengers.
Rutherford said: “That’s a recurring theme on biofuels generally for aviation.
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